A QUEER DISCOVERY.
When Ben reached the place where he had left Kit asleep, Carl stood with
a searchlight in his hand, examining footprints on the ground.
“He wandered away, of course!” Carl said.
“He must have done so,” was the puzzled reply.
“Because,” Carl went on, “there was no one here to lug him off.”
“That’s the supposition!” replied Ben anxiously.
“But why should the little customer sneak off without saying a word to
us?” demanded Carl. “That isn’t at all like him!”
“Perhaps he saw Jimmie’s light in the cavern and went in there,”
suggested Ben. “He’s an inquisitive little chap.”
The boys went to the western extremity of the canyon and looked down an
almost perpendicular wall, nearly a thousand feet in height, to the
surging waters of the Pacific ocean. They looked up the vertical walls
to the summits outlined against the stars. They threw their lights over
the crags at the head of the canyon.
“He’s still in here somewhere!” Ben asserted. “I don’t believe any one
could get out without using a flying machine!”
“Of course, he’s here!” Carl answered.
The boys walked closer to the face of the crag and turned their lights
on the broken walls.
“It would be just like him to follow Jimmie in there,” Carl observed.
“Sure it would!” replied Ben.
“But what gets me,” Carl went on, “is that he went away without asking
for anything to eat! The kid is second only to Jimmie in the capacity of
his stomach. He’s always hungry, especially after a short sleep.”
“It is a wonder he didn’t demand a square meal, as Jimmie calls it,
before wandering away,” Ben admitted.
“Here’s an opening which seems to be the only one Jimmie could enter far
enough to shut the light of his electric from the canyon,” Carl said, in
a moment. “If you’ll go back to the machines, I’ll go on in and get
Jimmie. I may find Kit with him, you know.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt of it,” Ben answered hopefully, at the
same moment knowing very well that there might be a good deal of doubt
about finding the boy in the cavern.
To tell the truth, Ben at that time felt a premonition of approaching
evil which he could by no means resist. It seemed to him impossible that
Kit could have wandered out of the canyon.
The only solution of the mystery which came to his mind lay in the
recognition of the fact that the canyon had been occupied by some
one—perhaps by the murderers themselves—at the moment of his entrance.
He disliked very much to give way to this reasoning, but saw no way out
of it. The disappearance of both Jimmie and Kit led him to believe that
whoever had occupied the canyon at the time of his arrival—if any one
had—had represented a hostile interest.
“Suppose,” he proposed to Carl, “that you hurry to the machines while I
go into the cavern. Or you might, if you see fit, pass in a short
distance with me and stand where you can watch the machines, and at the
same time follow my course into the underground passage.”
“That’s the idea!” cried Carl.
Ten feet in the passage turned abruptly to the north and there the boys
drew up. Ben pointed straight ahead.
“There’s a light!” he said.
Carl glanced eagerly in the direction indicated but saw nothing.
“A ghost light!” he laughed.
“No, but there is an illumination!” insisted Ben.
“Point it out, then,” chuckled Carl. “It is as dark in there as a stack
of black cats!”
Ben looked amazed for an instant and then started forward.
“I did see a light!” he insisted.
Carl laughed and stood at the angle of the passage where he could see
the machines, lighted by one small acetylene lamp, and also follow the
progress of his chum into the interior.
“Perhaps you did see a light,” he called after the boy, “but if you did
it got out of sight handily.”
Directly Ben turned in the passage and waved his light to attract Carl’s
attention.
“There’s another turn here,” he said.
“Shall I come on in?” asked Carl.
“Watch the machines!” was the answer that came back.
Still standing where he could see any light or hear any noise proceeding
from the cavern, Carl kept his eyes fixed on the machines, rather dimly
outlined by the rays of the single lamp.
He had remained in this position only a short time when a cry of alarm
came from the passage down which Ben had proceeded.
Swinging his light and answering the call by a shrill whistle, the boy
rushed forward.
At the turning point he saw Ben, Jimmie and Kit standing huddled about a
figure lying on the stone floor of the cavern.
Seeing his light, they beckoned him to approach.
“You see,” Jimmie said with a chuckle as Carl came up, “that we can’t
visit any part of the world, in the air or underground, that doesn’t
yield an adventure. Look what I found here!”
“What is it?” asked Carl, bending forward.
“Chinaman!” was the short answer.
The boys stood looking into each other’s faces with wondering glances
for a moment, and then Ben bent closer over the figure lying on the
stone floor.
“He’s still alive!” he said, in a moment.
“And tied up like a chicken!” Jimmie added, pointing to the cords which
bound the Chinaman’s wrists and ankles.
“Any old time we don’t go and find some one tied up!” Carl laughed.
“Where did you find him, Jimmie?” asked Carl.
“Wait a moment, boys!” Ben advised. “We’d better get back to the
machines before listening to any long stories.”
“And I was just thinking,” Jimmie cut in, “that I haven’t had any
supper! I’m just about starved to death!”
“Perhaps that’s what’s the matter with the Chinaman,” observed Carl.
“Anyway, we’d better carry him out to the machines and see how he acts
when presented with a square meal,” advised Ben.
“That’s all right!” Jimmie declared. “It’s all right to rescue the
perishing, and all that, but if some forest ranger should come along
here and find us mixed up with a Chinaman, we’d all be pinched!”
“Do they smuggle on this coast?” asked Carl.
“Of course they do!” replied Jimmie scornfully.
“Smuggle what?”
“Chinks and opium!”
“Then I see myself owning the Night and Day bank when I get back to New
York!” Carl exclaimed. “There’s a government reward for the capture of
men who run in Chinks and smuggle opium!”
“Well, we may as well be getting back to the machines,” urged Ben. “I’ll
run on ahead and see if they’re all right, and you boys may bring the
Chinaman along if you think best.”
“We’ll bring him along all right!” Jimmie answered. “We can’t leave him
lying here unconscious.”
Ben found that the machines had not been molested, and in a short time
his chums returned carrying the light form of the Chinaman with them.
The Celestial had regained consciousness and sat gazing about with
inquisitive eyes as soon as placed on the ground.
“Who trussed you up?” asked Jimmie.
The Chinaman shook his head until his queue rattled about like a rope’s
end in the wind.
“He can’t talk United States,” Carl explained.
“What are we going to do with him?” asked Jimmie.
“Keep him to do our laundry work!” chuckled Kit.
“What do you know about laundry work?” asked Ben turning to the boy.
“I used to work in the laundry,” returned Kit. “I had to do all the hard
work and the big fat girls got all the money.”
“Are you going to build a fire in that Devil’s Kitchen we discovered?”
asked Ben of Jimmie, as the boy began bringing out provisions.
“I should say not!”
“Then we can’t have any square meals!” Carl exclaimed.
“What did you see in there?” asked Ben.
“When I first went in,” Jimmie explained, “I got a whiff which made me
think of Pell street, in little old New York. It was opium, all right,
and I began to understand what I’d stumbled into.”
“Could you see a light?” asked Ben.
“No light! There was only the smell and a jabber which sounded to me
like the chin-chin in the back room of a laundry on Doyers street.”
“Then there are more Chinamen in there?” exclaimed Ben.
“There were more in there!” replied Jimmie.
“Where did they go?” asked Carl.
Kit sat back against Ben’s leg and let out a roar of laughter which for
a moment prevented the question being answered.
“Ask Kit!” Jimmie suggested.
“If you leave it to me,” Kit went on, still half choking with laughter,
“they slid into the ragged little slashes between the rocks! One minute
they were scampering along in their soft slippers, and the next they
were out of sight just like they had gone up in smoke.”
“I guess we’ve struck it!” Jimmie said in a moment.
“Don’t we always strike it?” asked Carl.
“You bet we do!” returned Jimmie. “But we never struck a nest of Chinks
before! What do you suppose they’re doing here, anyway?”
“Waiting to get into Frisco,” answered Ben. “They pay from four to eight
hundred dollars apiece for being smuggled into the country.”
Jimmie sprang to his feet, almost overturning a can of tomatoes from
which he had been feeding.
“But how did they get here?” insisted Carl.
“I know!” cried Jimmie all excitement. “I know all about it?”
“Wise little boy!” laughed Ben.
“Now you just hold on!” Jimmie continued. “You just wait until I unload
a little of Solomon’s wisdom on you boys.”
“Go ahead,” grinned Ben.
“You remember the light we saw when we came to the coast line?” Jimmie
demanded.
“Of course,” answered Carl.
“Well,” Jimmie went on, “that beacon was put there for the purpose of
directing some schooner loaded with Chinks to this place. Now what do
you think of us stumbling right into a mess like that?”
“I guess that’s right,” mused Ben. “The fire was built on a headland to
direct smugglers in. Now, I wonder why we didn’t think of that before
and get farther away?”
“But we are at least two miles away from the headland!” suggested Carl.
“Of course,” Ben returned, “for there is no cove where a vessel might
cast anchor along this rocky wall. The Chinks are undoubtedly unloaded
near the headland where we saw the fire and brought here to be kept
until they can be set into the country.”
“That’s all right!” exclaimed Jimmie. “That’s all right, so far as it
goes, but what about our finding this fellow all tied up?”
“That’s a thing no fellow can find out!” grinned Carl.
“When I followed Jimmie into the cave,” Kit replied, “there wasn’t no
Chinaman lying where this fellow was found.”
“We can’t solve the mystery if we talk here all night,” Ben observed,
directly, “so we’d better get our suppers and make up our minds what
we’re going to do through the night.”
“I want to sleep!” cried Jimmie and this sentiment was echoed by all the
others.
“This is a nice, quiet place to sleep,” Ben said, in a sarcastic tone,
“especially,” he added, “as there’s another beacon fire burning not far
south of us. If you look closely, you’ll see its reflection lighting up
the north wall of the canyon!”